College and Research Libraries


By A L I C E A . J A C K S O N 

Authors' Names in Negro Collections 

TH E M A N Y P H A S E S of N e g r o life and history have been the subject of an in-
creasing body of university research in 
recent years.1 A t the same time, racial 
problems brought into focus by w o r l d con-
ditions have directed the attention of many 
laymen to the problems of minority groups. 
In consequence, all types of libraries have 
become more keenly aware of materials for 
the study of N e g r o life and problems. T o 
aid student and lay readers, articles have 
appeared which describe available sources 
of N e g r o a n a . 2 T h i s field continues to ex-
pand through the discovery of hitherto un-
known privately printed or suppressed 
items, largely of the slavery period, as well 
as through the publications of c u r r e n t 
authors. As this expansion continues and 
new emphases broaden the scope of interest 
in N e g r o subjects, libraries are called upon 
to furnish satisfactory reference service on 
more and more questions involving the 
Negro. 

Obviously, adequate cataloging is one 
of the bases of satisfactory reference service. 
P r o p e r entry of authors' names f o r all 
authors is a factor contributing to an ade-
quate catalog. Establishing correct entries 
for N e g r o authors presents an increasingly 
troublesome problem f o r the cataloger, and 
the study here reported is the o u t g r o w t h of 
difficulties encountered in accomplishing this 

1 K n o x , E l l i s O . " T h e N e g r o a s a S u b j e c t of U n i v e r -
s i t y R e s e a r c h in 1943." Journal of Negro Education 
1 3 : 1 8 1 , A p r i l 1944. 

2 C f . B o n t e m p s , A r n a . " S p e c i a l C o l l e c t i o n s of 
N e g r o a n a . " Library Quarterly 14:187-206, J u l y 1944-

D u n l a p , M o l l i e E . " S p e c i a l C o l l e c t i o n s of N e g r o 
L i t e r a t u r e i n t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s . " Journal of Negro 
Education 4:482-89, O c t o b e r 1935. 

P o r t e r , D o r o t h y B. " L i b r a r y S o u r c e s f o r t h e S t u d y 
of N e g r o L i f e a n d H i s t o r y . " Journal of Negro Educa-
tion 5:232-44, A p r i l 1936. 

in libraries of all sizes where N e g r o materi-
als are handled. 

A survey of literature disclosed that al-
most n o t h i n g had been w r i t t e n on N e g r o 
collections f r o m the point of view of the 
cataloger. Inquiries f u r t h e r revealed that 
the general policy has been to establish en-
tries and identify authors as to race and 
national origin as adequately as the sources 
at hand permitted. U s i n g L i b r a r y of Con-
gress cards as a primary source, the cata-
loger must attempt to provide proper entry 
information for authors whose w o r k s are 
not in the L i b r a r y of Congress or f o r whom 
only analytics are required, and f u l l infor-
mation for entries in incomplete f o r m at the 
L i b r a r y of Congress. 

T o consider f o r study a cross section of 
all types of libraries h a n d l i n g N e g r o ma-
terials proved impractical because so many 
of them contain relatively small numbers 
of N e g r o titles and therefore do not require 
the independent organization which results 
in the distinctive policies and procedures de-
veloped in the special N e g r o collection, w i t h 
its separate staff and catalog. T h e w o r k 
was to be done w i t h N e w Y o r k City as a 
headquarters, and, since some of the repre-
sentative libraries of N e g r o literature are 
located at considerable distance f r o m t h a t 
city, the best plan seemed t h a t of d r a w i n g 
mainly upon the several large N e g r o collec-
tions located in N e w Y o r k City and W a s h -
ington, D . C . , where inquiry could be 
conducted by interview and personal investi-
gation. T h e Schomburg Collection of N e -
gro L i t e r a t u r e and the private library of 
A r t h u r B. Spingarn in N e w Y o r k City, 

OCTOBER, 1946 339 



the Moorland Foundation at Howard Uni-

versity, and the Library of Congress in 

Washington, were chosen.3 T h e Union 

Catalog at the Library of Congress was 

considered to serve as a check upon work 

done elsewhere and represented most of the 

collections which could not be visited. 

Some data were obtained from the special 

catalogs of the Fisk University and Hamp-

ton Institute libraries. 

Authors' Navies in the Collections 

T h e visits revealed no unusual methods 

of cataloging employed in establishing 

authors' names for Negro works. T h e 

policies and methods recorded here are not 

considered unique by those using them. 

Rather, they are an indication of progress 

in the establishment of uniform entries and 

in clarifying the picture of the cataloging 

of Negro materials. Reference facilities 

within a library proved its greatest asset in 

the location of information about authors' 

names. But no set of tools has been assem-

bled to bridge the gap caused by the dearth 

of known authoritative biographical, biblio-

graphical, and historical sources such as 

exist for the checking of names in the 

literature of races other than the Negro.4 

T o illustrate, there exist no tools for the 

Negro race to approximate the scope of 

The Dictionary of American Biography or 

The Dictionary of National Biography. 

Because so much information is gleaned 

outside of these regular channels, the co-

operation of the reference librarian is 

invaluable. T h i s fact also makes it essential 

that libraries limit the time spent in search-

ing this type of entry and underlies the 

policy of establishing entries with the most 

complete information at hand and making 

changes as necessary. Identity of Negro 

2 For an up-to-date description of these collections see 
Bontemps, A r n a , op. cit. 

4 F o r a summary of the scarcity of such materials see 
Spingarn, A r t h u r B. " C o l l e c t i n g a L i b r a r y of Negro 
L i t e r a t u r e . " Journal of Negro Education 7 : 1 3 , Janu-
a r y 1938. 

authors is indicated variously. T h e Moor-

land Foundation simply adds the note " N e -

gro author" to its main entry cards. Since 

the cards of the Schomburg Collection of 

Negro Literature are printed by the N e w 

Y o r k Public Library, race and nationality 

are given in a fuller note, e.g., " T h e author 

is an American N e g r o . " 

In the course of the investigation a group 

of typical problems about authors' names 

was gathered and careful attention was 

given to variant forms of entry and the 

reasons behind them. A n example of this 

sort is the slave narrative Fifty Years in 

Chains; or, The Life of an American Slave. 

T h e difficulty of establishing authorship in 

this case is augmented inasmuch as the slave 

narrative was often used by Negro and 

white writers wishing to create sympathy 

for the slave. Others merely exploited it as 

a popular literary form. T h e specific work 

mentioned was originally published in 1836 

with the title, Slavery in the United States: 

A Narrative of Charles Ball, a Black Alan. 

Prefatory notes to the N e w Y o r k edition 

say that the narrative was prepared by one 

Fisher, from Ball's verbal narrative. " M r . 

Fisher" remains an unidentified figure, a 

fact which has caused the work to be labeled 

spurious by some authorities. W h o e v e r 

wrote down the story, Ball is its originator 

and should be credited with authorship of 

the narrative.5 Authority quoted for the 

accepted form is the card of the catalog us-

ing it, in this case the Library of Congress, 

which gives the entry, Ball, Charles. 

Examination and Evaluation of Sources 

of Information 

A s has been stated, no adequate or estab-
lished sources for obtaining biographical 
and bibliographical information for Negro 
authors were reported in the collections 

3 Loggins, V e r n o n . The Negro Author. Columbia 
U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1931, p. 99. 

340 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



visited. Accordingly, a list of such sources 
as gave some of the desired information was 
gathered under the headings: 

1. Collective and individual biographies 
2. General encyclopedias 
3. General works on Negro literature and 

history 
4. Histories of special Negro groups, as the 

Negro church 
5. T r a d e catalogs 
6. Bibliographies 
7. Dictionaries of anonymous and pseudony-

mous literature 
8. Card catalogs of a selected list of li-

braries 
9. Periodicals and periodical indexes 

10. Sources for locating the names of Negro 
societies and institutions. 

The tools listed above were tested for 
general value and in connection with a list 
of personal names, in order to appraise them 
with regard to their usefulness as sources 
of information about authors' names in Ne-
gro collections. 

Checklists of personal names and anony-
mous and pseudonymous literature were 
compiled for use in testing these tools. For 
the period 1760-1900, a list of 209 names of 
Negro authors was drawn from The Negro 
Author by Vernon Loggins, conceded by 
reference librarians and authorities to be the 
most authentic work for the period. In the 
absence of a similar authoritative work for 
the period since 1900, attempts were made 
to compile a checklist from logical- combi-
nations of printed sources. Results were so 
repetitious that the plan was abandoned. 
Finally, a list of authors writing during this 
century, and not listed by Loggins, was 
compiled from the catalog of the Schomburg 
Collection of Negro Literature. This list 
of 386 names was checked by the catalogs 
of the Moorland Foundation, Fisk Uni-
versity, and Hampton Institute, and the 208 
names found in as many as three of the 
catalogs were used. Thus the checklists of 
personal names were composed of ( 1 ) 209 

names for the period prior to 1900 and (2) 
208 names for the period 1900-37. One 
hundred twenty samples of anonymous and 
pseudonymous literature were chosen from 
current catalogs of booksellers, The Classi-
fied Catalogue of the Collection of Anti-
Slavery Propaganda in the Oberlin College 
Library compiled by Geraldine H. Hub-
bard, and items examined in the Moorland 
Foundation and the New York Public Li-
brary. From these groups, ninety-one titles 
available for consideration during the course 
of the study constituted the final checklist. 

In the investigation of the individual 
titles, every type of tool that might provide 
usable data for establishing entries for 
authors' names was sought for examination. 
Many were excluded because they yielded 
no information, though others similar in 
scope proved valuable. Lack of authenticity 
ruled out some. Evaluations of one hun-
dred thirty-five were made. Descriptive 
notes and a distribution table were drawn 
up to provide an index to the completeness 
of the information given and the period for 
which each tool is useful. 

As illustrative of these tests a complete 
sample is provided for a title likely to be 
considered for first purchase. 

Who's who in colored America: a biographical 
dictionary of notable living persons of Afri-
can descent in America. 4th ed. 1937-
64OP. illus. 
Contains lists of authors' works which vary 

in completeness. 
The first edition of this work, issued in 

1927, contained 1,000 biographical sketches 
and 333 pages. The later edition has more 
than 2,700 sketches and 640 pages. In this, 
nothing has been added to many articles which 
appeared in the first edition save perhaps an 
additional published work. For example, 
God's Trombones, 1927, has been inserted in 
the article on James Weldon Johnson. On 
the other hand, Carter G. Woodson and 
George F. Bragg are given briefer treatment 
in the 1937 edition. Woodson's works are 
brought through 1928, but Bragg is credited 

OCTOBER, 1946 341 



with none. Necrologies are incomplete and 
often say "Deceased" instead of giving dates. 
Alphabetization is faulty and some pictures 
are included with no accompanying articles.6 

Total names listed: 89 
Distribution: List I List II 

Complete entries 12 68 
Complete name, one date o o 
Complete name only o 5 
Partial information 1 3 

Summary and Conclusions 

Investigation of the practices employed 
in cataloging the special Negro collections 
studied showed that catalogers working 
with the names of Negro authors experience 
more than usual difficulty in establishing 
main entries, as compared with that entailed 
in such entries for authors generally. T h e 
problem is augmented by the necessity for 
discovering the racial identity of the author, 
which, though actually not main entry in-
formation, is most logically searched in 
connection with complete name entries. Al-
though every type of usable material has 
been resorted to by catalogers handling 
names of Negro authors, there remains the 
gap caused by the dearth of known authori-
tative biographical, bibliographical, and 
historical sources such as exist for the check-
ing of races other than the Negro. Exclud-
ing the results from the checking of the 
Union Catalog of the Library of Congress, 
the names located in any single group of 
tools is not encouraging. T h e two most 
useful tools evaluated are W o r k ' s Bibliog-
raphy of the Negro in Africa and America 

a n d The United States Catalog. O f t h e 
417 names comprising the checklist of per-
sonal names used in testing, the two yielded 
an average of 230, only 55 per cent of the 
total. All collective biographies listed 209 
names, approximately 50 per cent of the 
total. As would be expected, bibliographi-
cal and biographical tools gave the highest 

• The 1941-44 (6th) ed., 1942, does not correct these 
faults. 

returns. In neither case is the figure im-
pressive, although complete and incomplete 
entries were included in computing the 
percentages. T h e high percentage of the 
total number of entries of anonymous and 
pseudonymous titles (96.4 p e r c e n t ) located 
in the Union Catalog of the Library of 
Congress, is a tribute to the cooperation 
existing among American libraries. 

Special Negro collections are contributing 
great service in the rapidly developing fields 
of research on subjects pertaining to the 
Negro. M u c h of this service is dependent 
on the library catalog. Since correct main 
entries influence the efficiency of the service 
rendered by the catalog, it is requisite that 
more adequate aids be provided the cata-
loger for main entry work with Negro 
authors.7 T h e cataloger of Negro materi-
als, along with the cataloger of serials, will 
always be engaged in what has been called a 
"gay science;" and "however exasperated 
we may be . . . yet there is always the 
lure of discovery, the hope of finding the 
ultimate solution."8 

In the light of this study, the following 
recommendations seem pertinent: 

1. Use of the research facilities of the 
Union Catalog of the Library of Congress is 
urged as an important means of insuring for 
Negro collections, regardless of size, main en-
tries uniform with those used in other li-
braries.9 This expert service is much less 
expensive than the searching of sources for 
obscure information which the collections in 
individual libraries usually cannot supply. 

2. In addition to supplying the Union Cata-
log with a record of unusual titles, librarians 
discovering significant main entry information, 

7 Appendices give the most adequate sources f o r e s t a b -
lishing main entries, according to evaluations made; a 
list of the more than 600 names of Negroes considered; 
and a checklist of the samples of anonymous and 
pseudonymous literature used. Included among the 
tools evaluated are a list of Bibliographies Identifying 
Negro Authors and Sources for Locating the Names 
of Negro Societies and Institutions. 

8 Pierson. H . W . " T h e G a y S c i e n c e . " A.L.A. 
Bulletin (Proceedings) 2 3 : P - i 4 4 , 1929. 

9 K l e t c h , Ernest. The Union Catalog of the Library 
of Congress, p. 7-8. Directions f o r using the catalog. 

(Continued on Page 345) 

342 COLLEGE AND RESEARCLI LIBRARIES